Trump's Legal Problems Escalate After DOJ Rejects His Immunity Claim

Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to claim "absolute immunity" from the civil lawsuits that he's been hit with for the events of January 6th, but the DOJ decided this week that they would NOT be backing his claims, as they had previously done. This opens up Trump to a world of hurt as the civil lawsuits progress, and he's got several of them to now be worried about. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The US Department of Justice submitted a filing in court this week asking the courts to reject Donald Trump's claim of absolute immunity with regard to the civil lawsuits that he is facing over the events of January 6th. Now, this is a very interesting reversal because at one point the DOJ had actually gone and argued that, yeah, we're gonna represent Trump, we're gonna be his lawyers for this. And now they're like, well, you know what? We're not gonna do that. Oh, and by the way, his only legal argument that he's offered so far in court filings is that he has absolute immunity. We're gonna go ahead and submit a brief saying, we, the Department of Justice completely disagree, and we want you to strip him of any immunity claims he may have. That is a major legal setback for Donald Trump, especially as the civil cases related to the, uh, Capitol Riot continue.

And to be honest, the groups that have filed these civil lawsuits, including one by Capitol police officers for the injuries they suffered, they stand a good chance of being successful, especially if Trump can't claim immunity. Here's why. We know now that Donald Trump instructed the social, uh, not social security, sorry, the Secret Service, to remove the metal detectors to let in the dangerous people. So you allowed the dangerous people to get in. We know that you told them to fight like hell, or you're not gonna have a country anymore. That's kind of a rallying cry. And we also know that you, uh, um, what is it you made the call to the Secret Service from the podium to let those people in regardless of what they were carrying.

Yeah. Kind of sounds like a pretty strong lawsuit against you, holding you liable for the injuries that the Capitol police officers and others suffered on that day. Now, here's another interesting fact In Donald Trump's arguments in court for the legal filings that his lawyers have made, they have not once argued the facts of the case. They have not once said that Donald Trump's actions that day did not lead to those injuries. They have never said that. All they've said is can't sue him. He's got immunity. You know, look at the Nixon stuff. You can't sue him. That's it. They have never once denied that he is responsible. They've just denied that you can hold him accountable for it. That's bad. Like if you're gonna make a filing claiming absolute immunity, the first thing you need to do is at least layout why you're not even liable to begin with. And then go to the immunity claim. That's going to tell the courts that, listen, we have looked at this. Not only have we determined that his actions did not cause the actions later in the day, but

We, we would also like to remind you that as president, he has absolute immunity from executive, uh, actions, but they left out the part where, yeah, we don't think he's responsible. They didn't, they didn't say that, which means they don't have a legal argument, which means if the DOJs bid as successful and the courts reject the claims of absolute immunity, Donald Trump's lawyers aren't prepared for that. They have not been crafting arguments, they have not been crafting a defense, and these lawsuits are coming up quicker than those lawyers would like to think. So they will be caught on their heels and they're gonna have to scramble to come up with a reason why Trump should not be held liable for all of those horrible things that he did on January 6th, and they don't have a lot of time left to do it.